White House observers were intrigued to read this week that Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's sweary chief of staff, was ready to hand in his notice amid growing tension between the two men over how to run the administration.

The Sunday Telegraph sourced its story from two anonymous political watchers. "I would bet he will go after the midterms", a "leading Democratic consultant" told the paper. "Nobody thinks it's working but they can't get rid of him – that would look awful. He needs the right sort of job to go to but the consensus is he'll go."

And "an official from the Bill Clinton era" told the paper that "no one will be surprised" if Emanuel left after the midterm elections in November, when the Democratic party will battle to save its majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Last night, however, Emanuel issued a typically blunt response to the article. "This is BS," he said. "And if you need it for translation, it's baseless."

A unnamed senior White House official described the article as "ludicrous".

The story, which gained traction on US news websites, seemed to back up rumours that there was a problematic personality clash in the White House, with the fiery, pragmatic Emanuel losing his patience with the more idealistic Obama. Opinions today were divided on whether Emanuel's denial can be taken at face value. The political website Politico said today that Emanuel didn't look as though he was ready to hand in his notice: "He's shown few signs of loosening his grip on the tiller – bombarding White House staffers with long-distance calls during the first days of the Gulf oil spill even as he travelled in Israel for his son's barmitzvah."

Elsewhere, others, including the Atlantic point out that Emanuel always said he wasn't going to do the job for long. "Emanuel has said repeatedly that he's told President Obama that his shelf life is about two years," said Marc Ambinder.

Exactly, said Alex Pareene on salon.com – "And we are coming up on the two year mark. So this article is a bit like a breaking political news story that says 'Barack Obama will definitely not be president in 2017.'"